1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to technology for supporting multiple data stores.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the growth of the Internet, the use of networks and other information technologies, Identity Systems have become more popular. In general, an Identity System provides for the creation, removal, editing and other managing of identity information stored in various types of data stores. The identity information pertains to users, groups, organizations and/or things. For each entry in the data store, a set of attributes are stored. For example, the attributes stored for a user may include a name, address, employee number, telephone number, email address, user ID and password. The Identity System can also manage access privileges that govern what an entity can view, create, modify or use in the Identity System. Often, this management of access privileges is based on one or more specific attributes, membership in a group and/or association with an organization.
Some Identity Systems use LDAP directories to store data. Other systems use SQL databases or other types of data stores. Typically, all of the data is maintained in one data store. However, there are cases when multiple data stores are necessary. For example, if the amount of data is too big to fit in one data store, multiple data stores may be necessary. Additionally, some entities desire a back-up or shadow data store, which stores a replica of the main data store for fault tolerance reasons. Thus, there is a need to support multiple data stores.
The idea of multiple data stores is not new. However, the use of multiple data stores for an Identity System, web access management systems and other similar systems has presented new issues that have not been solved. For example, there is no solution that allows for multiple and different types of data stores with such systems.
Some users of Identity Systems also use Access Systems. An Access System provides for the authentication and authorization of users attempting to access resources. For efficiency purposes, there is an advantage to integrating the Identity System and the Access System. For example, both systems can share the same set of data stores. However, there has not been a solution for integrating an Identity System and an Access System, such that the combined system can support multiple data stores.
For the reasons described herein, there is a need for improved technology that can be used by a system to support multiple data stores.